Imagine me and you, and you and me
I walked Loca through the park this morning, happy to be home, happy to be here in New Orleans, happy that Loca was behaving. I saw a woman looking at a bird in the tree in the middle of the lagoon. I said to her, “It must be fall if the cormorants are back.” She said, “It’s an anhinga.”
I told her I thought it was but I had been corrected by someone when I said anhinga, the person told me they’re cormorants. Well the truth is the cormorants come back around the same time the pelicans do. But we (me and this woman) don’t think the anhingas are migratory.
Last week when I got back from Portugal I saw the male of this anhinga pair with his jet black wings stretched fully out. The cormorants and the anhingas are the only birds I know that air dry their wings.
The woman said this anhinga pair had been around in the last couple of weeks but they have been here for a few years. That would make me believe they are migratory since I just noticed the male a week ago and haven’t seen any for a while.
The cool thing about anhingas is they skim the water and have long snake like necks. The tell on them is that cormorant has a stubby tale like a crow and a hooked beak. The anhingas are pure snake in length – straight long beak, long straight tale and those long snakey necks.